Director Steven Soderbergh—the man behind Magic Mike, The Knick, and this summer’s Logan Lucky—just released the trailer for his latest project. He made it with the help of HBO, but it’s not a movie or TV show. Instead, Mosaic is an interactive narrative app that will be available for free download in November. Co-written by Ed Solomon, it’s a murder mystery starring Sharon Stone that lets viewers click through a growing web of “chapters,” deciding how the homicide investigation unfolds. This isn’t a novel idea; creators have been experimenting with branching narratives for decades without garnering much popular interest. But it also might be just the right concept at just the right time: Perhaps mainstream audiences are finally ready to adventure beyond the familiarity of linear stories.

Mosaic’s marketing slogan is, “A new storytelling experience that lets you choose your own path.” But, as Soderbergh told the audience at last weekend’s Future of Storytelling Festival in New York, hearing people call it a “choose your own adventure” story makes him cringe. Sure, viewers are presented with two possible scenes following each chapter, but they can only choose the order of the scenes they watch and which character to follow, not the action in the scenes themselves. Mosaic’s is a fixed universe, viewers just get to discover it in their own way. In Soderbergh’s view, it’s more like a film than a television series, but it’s likely that, since most people will experience it on their phones, they’ll watch it in chunks like they do TV.

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Soderbergh may never make another interactive story app, yet he seems certain that Mosaic is an early iteration of a form about to take off. “I referred to it as our cave painting,” he said, “because I look at it now and think, ‘Somebody’s gonna take this thing and really run with it.’” He’s probably right. Thanks to the hype around virtual reality, audiences—and studios and networks—have a newfound interest in different, and especially interactive, forms of storytelling. With Soderbergh and HBO willing to go all in on an interactive app, the probability that other experiments in entertainment will find their audience (and their funders) increases exponentially.

What those experiments will yield, though, is (ahem) another story. So far, a lot of mainstream Hollywood’s adoption of interactive storytelling has come in the form of VR experiences tied to shows and films. Those things are fine for marketing, but don’t really push things forward. During Future of Storytelling, which is meant to exhibit and incubate the cutting-edge in narrative media, VR experiences for TV’s Silicon Valley and Rick and Morty drew audiences while the Mr. Robot VR experience from 2016 sat canonized inside a nearly empty “Classics” tent. The fest also featured a preview of the forthcoming Mr. Robot Alexa skill, which gives the impression that your Amazon Echo has been hacked by the show’s revolutionary cyber-gang F Society. If anything, they demonstrated a willingness to embrace new narratives, if not a clear idea of how to do so.

What those experiments will yield, though, is another story. Much of mainstream Hollywood’s adoption of interactive storytelling has come in the form of VR experiences tied to shows and films. Those things are fine for marketing, but don’t really push things forward.

“It’s not that I want the audience to decide what’s going to happen to the characters,” Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail said, referencing Soderbergh’s work with Mosaic. “But it would be amazing to have a form of storytelling where you’re continually reframing what you think is going on.”

Figuring out what to do with interactive narratives comes coupled with figuring out where audiences will want to interact with them. In Future of Storytelling’s exhibition setting, attendees mostly stumbled around in VR, while volunteers shouted directions at them. “Now grab the beer bottle,” yelled one at a Silicon Valley installation, watching the person’s headset view on a monitor. “Closer… closer… OK now throw it! Huh, it usually breaks.” Not exactly the definition of “immersion.” Eventually, more homes will have VR rigs, allowing fans to find their way through these stories on their own. In the meantime, though, they’re stuck navigating them at conferences and friend’s houses.

That ease of adoption is what makes Mosaic, and any who follow its lead, so interesting: It’s on smartphones, so the barrier to entry is low. It’s also an original story being presented by a major cable network, not an experience to enhance one of its shows. That’s likely no accident. Soderbergh, for his part, is a VR cynic. In August, he told Film Comment “as a narrative space, VR is never going to work.” For Mosaic, he claims he was adamant that the story have integrity and not just be used to “prop up technology”—surely a jab at the current state of VR content. He’s backing that up. After releasing the app, he and HBO will release the story it as a linear six-part miniseries in January 2018, likely one of the first—if not the first—times a television show has accompanied an app, rather than the other way around.

Judging from the short clips shown to the festival audience, Soderbergh’s latest project won’t disappoint. Whether the format will be able to keep audiences engaged, though, remains to be seen. Soothsayers have predicted ill-fated storytelling revolutions before, leaving many an exquisite corpse in their wake. But if Soderbergh has, indeed, found the magic moment—the perfect time to introduce Hollywood-quality interactive stories to the world—then TV viewers will soon have a lot more adventures to choose from.

LONDON (Reuters) – “The future is exciting. Ready?”, Vodafone is asking in a new campaign it hopes will capture a sense of optimism about technology, an association mobile operators have to some extent lost in recent years to the likes of Facebook, Google and Apple.

The slogan, which replaces “Power to You”, in use since 2009, will be deployed in all of the company’s 36 markets from Friday in the biggest ad campaign in its 33-year history, Vodafone said.

“Technology can be complex, can be overwhelming and can sometimes alienate people,” said Serpil Timuray, Vodafone’s chief commercial operations and strategy officer.

”But at the same time we know that digital innovations have significant benefits for individuals and for societies.

“In order to express this point of view, we will be repositioning the Vodafone brand on the theme of future optimism.”

The new strapline has echoes of “The future’s bright. The future’s Orange” – a slogan that helped Orange establish itself as a new rival to Vodafone when it launched in 1994.

Vodafone, the world’s second largest mobile operator, declined to say how much it was spending on the brand overhaul, which also includes a new visual identity based on its “speech mark” logo.

It’s such a weird thing to hear, it seems counter-intuitive: London City Airport is building a new air traffic control tower that will be completely digital and manned by a group of human controllers who will be over 100 miles away.

High-definition video will be transmitted to the remote location, providing the human controllers with 360-degree video and live sound so that the controllers will feel like they’re still at the airport even though they’re far away.

The big advantage here: the high-definition visuals, provided by over a dozen different “pan-tilt-zoom” cameras, will allow controllers to see things in finer details than they could with the naked eye with a 30X zoom, like spotting rogue drones that pose a danger. Read more…

In Lew Cirne’s view, all companies are now software companies and understanding how your software is treating your customers is key to business success. Cirne is the founder and CEO of New Relic, a cloud-based provider of application management tools. In this CEO Interview Series conversation with IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant, Cirne explained how New Relic gets IT and business execs on the same page in improving operations and customer experience, and he described the company’s new tools for keeping highly virtualized private and public infrastructure in synch. He also talked about a ‘unique’ pricing scheme that recognizes the dynamic nature of computing today, and outlined why existing management tool vendors have a long way to go to catch up with New Relic.

In Lew Cirne’s view, all companies are now software companies and understanding how your software is treating your customers is key to business success. Cirne is the founder and CEO of New Relic, a cloud-based provider of application management tools. In this CEO Interview Series conversation with IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant, Cirne explained how New Relic gets IT and business execs on the same page in improving operations and customer experience, and he described the company’s new tools for keeping highly virtualized private and public infrastructure in synch. He also talked about a ‘unique’ pricing scheme that recognizes the dynamic nature of computing today, and outlined why existing management tool vendors have a long way to go to catch up with New Relic.

In Lew Cirne’s view, all companies are now software companies and understanding how your software is treating your customers is key to business success. Cirne is the founder and CEO of New Relic, a cloud-based provider of application management tools. In this CEO Interview Series conversation with IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant, Cirne explained how New Relic gets IT and business execs on the same page in improving operations and customer experience, and he described the company’s new tools for keeping highly virtualized private and public infrastructure in synch. He also talked about a ‘unique’ pricing scheme that recognizes the dynamic nature of computing today, and outlined why existing management tool vendors have a long way to go to catch up with New Relic.

For more than 50 years mainframes have powered thousands of organizations around the world, from banks to militaries to government agencies. Looking looking back at all that history makes me think about the critical role that big iron has played in the world, but it also gets me thinking about the future and what the next 10 years holds for the mainframe industry.

What makes me so confident that mainframing even has a 2026 worth looking forward to? After all, hasn’t the cloud revolutionized data storage and processing and ushered in the end of mainframes? The truth is that not every disruptive development replaces what it disrupted—sometimes not immediately and sometimes not at all. Globalization did not kill American IT jobs, Metallica didn’t negate Van Halen, and the cloud won’t kill mainframes because mainframes have something that the cloud will need over the next decade: power.

At a glance, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus might be confused for their predecessors, the 6s and 6s Plus. It’s deceptive. The iPhone 7 is perhaps the most drastic revision of the phone since it was first released nearly a decade ago. It’s not just the missing headphone jack. There are several other big ideas, including a new dual camera system (on the 7 Plus), a new touch sensor home button, and mercifully, newly added water resistance. These are substantial changes, and they hint at what we can expect from the future of Apple phones.

On a single charge, the average consumer drone only nets about eight to 10 minutes of flight time. The solution is obvious: stuff a bigger battery into it. Problem is, the solution adds weight, which decreases flight time. It’s the ultimate catch-22. Dr. Samer Aldhaher of the Imperial College London thinks he has the answer, kinda. Aldhaher created a prototype of a lightweight, battery-less drone that hovers in place and sucks power from a transmitter below. The drone is only capable of hovering and making small side-to-side movements, but the prototype proves the utility of wireless power technology. As drones take to the skies in record numbers, a handful…

We live in an age where people are constantly plugged in at the cost of tuning everything and everyone else out.

A new pair of ear-free headphones, BATBAND, wants to combat that. It’s a product that “makes your social lifescape compatible with your private soundscapes,” the company said in its Kickstarter video. Sounds fancy. But does it look fancy? Not exactly. In fact, I heard one person ask, “Are we absolutely sure these aren’t alien mind-control units?”

It’s basically a horseshoe-shaped band of spring steel that wraps the back of your head and has an inner lining padded for comfort and minimum sound leakage. Pair it to your mobile device via bluetooth, and voila, you can listen to music and the sound of cars, trains, people, birds, planes, what have you, at the same time. Read more…

Virtual reality company Oculus VR revealed new details about its product lineup and partnerships on Thursday morning, as the Facebook-owned company inched closer to the Q1 2016 release of its flagship device, the Oculus Rift VR headset.

Hybrid-cloud adoption is set to triple over the next three years. But as hybrid cloud grows, enterprises are already looking for ways to better manage their hybrid-hosting infrastructure needs. In today’s modern, digital-savvy world, hosting customers …

TV Central to decide future after devastating data loss
TV Central owner and editor Aaron Ryan released a statement to the media on Monday claiming the blame lay solely with its web hosting supplier, VentraIP, and that legal action was proceeding. "Not since the death of my sister back in 1997 have I been …Read more on The Spy Report

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